Five decades of music. Two centuries of tradition.

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band is the music of New Orleans.

It is the joyful sound that has emanated from the streets, bars and homes of the famous French Quarter for the last 200 years.
The music conjures up images of jambalaya and po’ boys, Mardi Gras parades, streetcars and the smiling faces of the unique breed of individuals who call the city “home.”
In its swinging rhythms, sweet harmonies and songs about both good times and bad, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band transport listeners to another era, to the time when jazz was born in the smoky backrooms and funeral marches of old New Orleans.

The Birth of Jazz

New Orleans is widely considered to be the birthplace of jazz. Over the decades, it is true that the sound has mutated into Dixieland, bebop, hard-bop, fusion and a thousand other forms. However, its origins can be traced back to the gospel and traditional field calls of African-Americans as well as the funeral marches of New Orleans’s many brass bands around the turn of the 20th century.
Ben Jaffe, the creative director of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, attributes New Orleans’s reputation as the home of jazz—and as a place to shed your inhibitions—to its seafaring past.
“New Orleans is a maritime city. For many years, we had the largest port in the world, and it remains a viable port and a major source of revenue for the city. When you have a port city, you have an incredible influx of international people moving through the city, coming and going.”
Jaffe explains that, historically, New Orleans has always been a “good-time place,” particularly the French Quarter and the old red-light district, Storyville.
“If I were a sailor in 1912 or 1890 and I was about to take off for Europe and New Orleans was my last port before I left for a three-month journey at sea with a boatload of men…it’s pretty obvious what you would want to do,” he says. “You would want to go out and drink and eat and be merry with all of your friends. Part of that is listening to great music and being entertained. So this has always been a city that provided entertainment of all kinds.”

Making the Band

Located on St. Peter Street only steps away from the rowdy crowds and neon lights of Bourbon Street, Preservation Hall hasn’t changed much since 1961, when it was established as the home for traditional New Orleans jazz.
Originally built in 1750 as a private residence, the building survived the Great New Orleans Fires of 1788 and 1794, the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812, and most recently, the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina.
It was eventually converted to an art gallery owned by Larry Borenstein, who encouraged jazz musicians to drop by for informal jam sessions. Music lovers Allan Jaffe, an accomplished tuba player, and his wife, Sandra, took control of the hall in 1961.
The couple saw that traditional New Orleans jazz—the music that had provided the soundtrack for the French Quarter for the past several generations—was at risk of being abandoned in the face of the burgeoning new sounds of the ’60s. They knew that if the music of New Orleans wasn’t protected, it could disappear forever.
The result was Preservation Hall. Allan transformed the space from a local hangout for musicians to a formal venue where premier traditional jazz could be heard seven days a week. He also formed the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, in which he played tuba.
“New Orleans jazz would not be alive today if it were not for Preservation Hall,” says Ben Jaffe, son of Allan and Sandra and now the creative director and leader of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.
“Preservation Hall was instrumental in providing a safe haven for New Orleans musicians—musicians who weren’t performing anywhere else in the city because the style of music had pretty much gone out of style.”
The hall also helped break down racial barriers. At the time of its inception, the rule throughout most of the Southern United States was “separate but equal.”
As Ben sees it, the venue “came into existence at a critical moment in our history as a city, as a state and as a country…Its humble origins were right in the middle of the civil rights movement, when it was frowned upon for white musicians and African-American musicians to perform together, (and) for African-American musicians to perform in front of white audiences. These were things that Preservation Hall was a part of changing.”

A Continuing Tradition

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band now performs over 100 shows every year, both within the weathered walls of Preservation Hall and at venues around the globe. The group has performed for every American president since Kennedy and has released nearly 20 albums, with their newest being New Orleans Preservation Volume 1.
On most nights, the current lineup features tuba, trumpet, clarinet, saxophone, trombone, stringed bass, piano and drums, with just about everyone taking their turn singing, just like they did in the old days.
“It’s amazing to think that [the opening of Preservation Hall] was almost 50 years ago. We’ve been open, pretty much doing exactly the same thing every night for the past 50 years.”
At Preservation Hall, the focus is on the music. No drinks or food are served, and there’s no dance floor or air conditioning.
While the walls may be a little dusty and the floor a little crooked, for an authentic “good time” New Orleans experience, there’s nowhere better.
Just about all of the city’s best—and best-known—musicians have performed at the hall and collaborated with the band, including Louis Armstrong, Sweet Emma Barrett, Dr. John and Allen Toussaint.
Ben took over as both the band’s creative director and tuba player when his father passed away in 1987. For him, the hall was part of the family. “The hall was really my backyard. A lot of the musicians who I am playing with today, I grew up with,” he explains. “They were either classmates of mine or teachers of mine or people I knew from the neighborhood.
“One of the amazing thing about the band is what an honest reflection it is of New Orleans,” he continues. “It really is a true mirror image of the city—culturally, spiritually. It’s all of the things that are my New Orleans.”